Lord Heseltine still maintains that he “negotiated the biggest deal Britain had ever done to give Britain potentially the leadership of fighter aircraft development in Europe”. But this view isn’t shared by his predecessor, who launched the Eurofighter. “It was a terribly bad decision,” Sir John Nott told me. “One of the worst decisions I made at the MoD.”
Is that the same Heseltine who left government service the better part of ten years ago? Wow GHT your reporting is as up to date as ever……………And is that the same John Nott who told the world about the Battle of Goose Green in the Falklands, the day before it was fought? Hmmmmmmmm he must be an expert on defence matters then. He really must know the difference between a good decision and a bad one. Don’t tell me about him being a defence secretary, Micky Mouse could be a defence secretary it doesn’t mean you know the first thing about defence. Come to that GHT you could be a defence secretary all you have to do it sit there, look interested and nod your head. Its best to keep your mouth shut though you don’t want to advertise the fact that you know f**k all about your chosen profession. Ah. Actually on second thoughts. You are quite incapable of keeping your mouth shut so you’d best forget the idea.
Singapore, which needs to update its air force, will evaluate the Eurofighter’s performance against French and American rivals. An overseas sale might offset some of the £20 billion which the aircraft has so far cost the British taxpayer – the equivalent of three Channel Tunnels or Railtrack’s costs for the next five years – and would be much-needed encouragement to a four-nation collaboration which has been plagued by cost over-runs and difficulties for two decades.
So tell me again how much has the Rafale cost the French taxpayer? Its a damn sight more that £20bn.
Apart from a modest purchase by Austria and orders from the countries where the aircraft is being built, the UK, Spain, Italy and Germany, the Eurofighter has not been sold anywhere. At the Dubai Air Show last month, it was only present as a model while its rivals cavorted overhead in spectacular flying displays. The RAF was supposed to be getting 232 of them but there are still problems with the aircraft’s electronic systems and it will not be in squadron service until 2006, and then only in the basic form of an air-combat version, which critics claim is a relic of the Cold War and should have been scrapped years ago.
And how many Rafales have been sold? To date I mean outside France? It might win the Singapore contest but so far how many Rafale exports are there? That Cold War Relic chestnut simply doesn’t cut it. If the Typhoon is a relic so is the Rafale, the Raptor, the Gripen, the Super Hornet etc etc.
Another concern for government was that British Aerospace was a promising candidate for privatisation, which eventually occurred in 1985. The company could not be left to collapse. British Aerospace argued that the new European fighter concept ought to be allowed to the preliminary experimental stage. If not, it predicted that BAe would fold and the design teams disperse. Reluctantly, in 1982, Mr Nott released £300 million for the start of design work to keep jobs and the company’s value high.
It could be argued that without government help and work, any company can fold. In fact Dassault is itself subsidised heavily by the French government is it not?
Michael Heseltine, Mr Nott’s Europhile successor, grasped the project with enthusiasm but could not accept a French proposal that the aircraft should be based on a French design. France withdrew and went on to design its own Rafale fighter. (A squadron is now in service with the French navy.) In 1985 the four surviving partners signed an agreement committing themselves to building up to 750 Eurofighters. The cost of 250 for Britain was estimated at about £7 billion. The RAF’s first squadron was to have been in service by 1992.
Okay so 9 aircraft are in service with the French Navy. Well done have a medal. How many in service with the AdlA? How many Typhoons have been produced so far and are under operational evaluation? I’ll give you a clue, its more than 9.
All this says is that the aircraft has encountered political difficulties not many technical difficulties. Its is over budget and it is late but ten years late? No I don’t accept this and in any case give me one example where a new aircraft has encountered no political or technical difficulties whatsoever. The current delay in the Rafale procurement is down to political and financial difficulties does this make the aircraft a waste of money? No I didn’t think so.
With the swing role capability of this platform it is more relevant today than when it was first conceived and don’t give me any of your ‘Omni role’ crap, its just a fancy expression for ‘swing role’ and is designed for the sales brochure. The rest of us don’t see the difference because there isn’t any.
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